The Santa Maria City Council will vote this week on whether to increase costs for users of some city services, like application fees on building permits.
Fueling the proposed increase is the idea that residents using a specific service should reimburse the local government for the whole cost of providing that service.
In 2021, the Santa Maria City Council voted to slowly raise fees over five years until users were covering 100% of service costs.
Not everything a city does works that way — fire and police departments are generally tax-payer funded.
Local governments also sometimes subsidize a service for a specific goal. If a city wanted to encourage residents to exercise, it might set recreation fees purposefully low and cover the remaining costs.
In Santa Maria, the latest round of proposed fee increases would go into effect on August 1, potentially bringing in an additional $2 million in revenue.
Some of the largest increases would be in building permit application fees. The current cost of a development agreement application is $3,977 and recovers 25% of the city’s costs; that fee could jump to $15,890 in order to cover the whole cost of service.
If the resolution is approved, not all prices would increase. Youth sports program fees would remain $39 for residents and $49 for non-residents.
Most library fees would also stay the same, but the cost of replacing a lost library card would double from $1 to $2.
The Santa Maria City Council will vote on the fee increases at their next meeting on June 2.
